Photo credit: AMAP Brazil
Rewilding is happening now all over the world, both on land and at sea, bringing back key species and restoring entire ecosystems at all scales. We are part of a growing, global and hopeful movement.
In this article, we introduce you to three rewilding organisations from our network so that you can hear each week about some of the exciting success stories, challenges and ambitious aims.
We warmly welcome three new Alliance Partners: Wilder Blean Bison Project, AMAP Brasil and Oceanwise.
Connecting our fragmented habitats for wildlife in Southeast England
Partner Organisation: Kent Wildlife Trust, The Wilder Blean Initiative
Location: Kent, United Kingdom
Situated on the outskirts of Canterbury, Kent’s Blean complex is the largest area of continuous ancient woodland in southern England. It is a hotspot for the rare and iconic heath fritillary butterfly and Red-listed woodland specialist birds, including lesser-spotted woodpeckers, nightingales and spotted flycatchers. Several invertebrate species thought extinct in the UK have also been recently recorded. With only 2.5% of the UK covered by ancient woodland, protecting every hectare is vital.
The Wilder Blean Initiative have embarked on a journey that will see the future of the Blean secured to become a place not only visited for its outstanding wildlife and scenic woodlands but also recognised for its positive social and economic opportunities for the community.
Over the next ten years, using a collaborative partnership approach including Kent Wildlife Trust, the Woodland Trust and RSPB, the Wilder Blean Initiative will work with the community, landowners, businesses and stakeholders to bring together knowledge, expertise and ideas to build and deliver a vision for this landscape. Driven by natural processes, the initiative will see missing species returned to a defragmented and wilded landscape in one of the most land-scarce corners of England.
Kent Wildlife Trust began this journey in West Blean and Thorden Woods, working with Wildwood Trust to introduce a small herd of European bison – ecosystem engineers who play a key role in shaping the landscape around them. They support the return and abundance of many wonderful species from the soil to the sky. In other words, the natural bison behaviours – grazing, dust bathing, eating bark, spreading dung and felling trees – enable other species to thrive.
Photo credit: Donovan Wright, Kent Wildlife Trust
The herd, a keystone species, will soon live alongside Exmoor ponies and Iron-Age pigs, as they transform the woods into a lush, thriving, biodiverse environment once more by managing the land naturally. Elsewhere in the woodland, longhorn cattle are present, with ecologists studying the different impacts of all the West Blean animals in one of the largest woodland monitoring programmes of its kind ever undertaken in the UK.
Plans to install bison bridges later this year will connect more of West Blean allowing the herd to access a further 150 hectares of the woodland so that they can continue their rewilding journey. Once these are installed the ponies and pigs will be introduced to the herd.
All of the animals in West Blean are making a difference through their grazing behaviours, helping to mitigate the effects of climate change through cooling, water storage and carbon sequestration, which are all benefits felt by the wider community.
If you’re a nearby landowner or investor who would like to get to learn more about the project and how you can get involved please get in touch by emailing .
The little marmosets that are inspiring restoration of one of the most biodiverse regions in the world
Partner Organisation: Almada Mata Atlântica Project (AMAP) Brasil
Location: Mata Atlântica, Brazil
AMAP’s mission is the long term conservation of the Mata Atlântica, the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest, and its biodiversity, considered to be one of the most species-rich ecosystems on earth – new species are still being discovered here!
Photo Credit: AMAP Brasil
As indicated by their glowing logo, they launched in 2016 originally to protect the golden-headed lion tamarin, an endangered species endemic to Brasil that can only be found in the lowland and premontane tropical forest fragments in the state of Bahia (90% of which has been destroyed or fragmented). In recent years, AMAP’s scope has widened and is now working to re-establish a wildlife corridor, connecting habitats, not only for the lion tamarind but also other endangered tree species.
AMAP had a vision founded in Germany in 2016 that crossed the Atlantic to Bahia a year later to unite local communities to bring back flora and fauna of the area. Cocoa grows as understorey in the shade of the native forests, used as habitats or corridors by the native fauna. Only due to this unique type of cocoa agroforestry, so called cabrucas, the lion tamarins (and others) could survive until today. AMAP promotes the conservation and expansion of these crucial biodiversity hotspots through land acquisition, reforestation and organic sustainable cacao cultivation with many local families and indigenous communities, each in their own way and restoration method, to bring nature pouring back.
For example, since 2023, they have encouraged a shift to sustainable agricultural cultivation methods, allowing forest restoration to occur alongside income opportunities, with the Pataxó Hã Hã Hãe indigenous community in the reserve of Caramuru-Paraguaçu.
What about the golden-headed lion tamarins? Well, this small species of marmoset is a ‘flagship species’ for the local area, that is, monitoring their recovery of wild populations indicates wider habitat health, all of which positively impacts numerous species that are not yet closely monitored. And, of course, it signals the return of their characteristically bearded-faces to our forests!
Restoring our underwater forests & their inhabitants
Partner Organisation: Oceanwise
Location: Headquarters in Canada; a global reach
You have most likely heard of reforestation, the process of re-planting trees in areas that have lost their original forest canopies to help restore these vital habitats and capture carbon. But what about our underwater forests? Amazingly, this same concept can be applied to restore the kelp forests that have been lost in our oceans and our new partner Ocean Wise is doing exactly this through their Seaforestation initiative.
Photo credit: KGrif from Getty Images
Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Ocean Wise is a globally focused conservation organisation on a mission to protect and restore the world’s oceans. Through research, education, direct-action conservation and field projects, they empower communities and mobilise millions to take action for ocean health.
Kelp forests serve as the cornerstone of coastal ecosystems. From tiny invertebrates to majestic marine mammals, these underwater forests provide critical shelter, food, and breeding grounds for thousands of marine species. The forests protect coastlines from the impacts of extreme weather events by absorbing their energy, and they capture large volumes of carbon in their tissue, some of which gets trapped in the ocean floor for centuries. Astoundingly, kelp grows 30 times faster than trees, meaning many ecosystem benefits can be realised on an accelerated timeline in comparison to land-based reforestation.
Photo credit: Oceanwise
Ocean Wise is working with Indigenous Peoples, governments, industry, academia, and other partners to accelerate and scale the protection, restoration, and ocean-positive cultivation of kelp forests around the world. They have ongoing kelp restoration projects in British Columbia and in Chile where they are trialling novel seed production techniques, outplanting methodologies and a implementing a suite of innovative technologies and processes to better measure and quantify the various ecosystem services that kelp forests provide (as seen above in the photo: using oysters as the planting substrate). As a member of the Kelp Forest Alliance, they are part of a larger network of 100+ partners aiming to protect and restore 4 million hectares of kelp forests around the world by 2040.
We can certainly join them in “taking action for the ocean today, so we can all flourish”.
We hope that you enjoyed getting to know a handful of our Alliance Partners. More to come!
See their websites here: